#9 2700

• Prosocial behavior refers to any behavior performed with the goal of benefiting another person.
• Prosocial behavior can be motivated by self-interest or altruism.
• Altruism is the desire to help others, even when it incurs costs to oneself.

Altruism in Animals

• Some birds, mammals, fish, and insects exhibit altruistic behavior.
• Precision rescue behaviors have been observed in Tetramorium sp. E ants.

Altruism: An Evolutionary Paradox

• Natural selection favors behaviors that promote survival.
• Altruism can be explained by kin selection, reciprocity norm, and the ability to learn social norms.

Kin Selection

• Kin selection is the idea that behavior that helps a genetic relative is favored by natural selection, even if it hurts the individual directly.
• Genes get passed on when genetic relatives have children.
• Kin selection is not necessarily a conscious process.
• Emotional closeness to a relative predicts altruism.

Reciprocity Norm

• The reciprocity norm is the expectation that helping others will increase the likelihood they will return the favor in the future.
• The expectation of reciprocity may start to develop in infancy.

Ability to Learn Social Norms

• People who learn and follow societal norms are more likely to survive.
• Normative beliefs about things such as food or holidays exist.
• Altruism is one cross-cultural norm.

Social Exchange Theory

• Helping can be motivated by self-interest and the desire to maximize rewards while minimizing costs.
• Helping may be avoided if it's too costly.
• This perspective questions the existence of true altruism.

Pros and Cons of Helping

• Benefits include feeling good, avoiding punishment, gaining social approval, decreasing distress, and receiving future help.
• Costs include physical danger, pain, embarrassment, time consumption, monetary loss, and social consequences.

Empathy-Altruism Theory

• Altruism only occurs when we feel empathy for the person in need.
• Social exchange prevails under low-empathy conditions.
• Helping occurs under high-empathy conditions, even with a cost.
• Empathy is the ability to experience events and emotions the way another person experiences them.
• Empathy is linked to mirror neurons.

Perspective-Taking

• Perspective-taking involves considering what another person might be thinking or feeling in a given situation.
• Perspective-taking stimulates the experience of empathy.
• Perspective-taking is a cognitive skill distinct from emotional capacity.

Individual Differences and Prosocial Behavior

• The altruistic personality involves aspects of a person's disposition.
• Situational factors interact with personality to influence prosocial behavior.
• Factors include gender, SES, cultural differences, religion, and mood.

Gender Differences

• Men are more likely to perform acts of bravery and heroism.
• Women are more likely to provide supportive, long-term help to individuals, groups, and important causes.

Socioeconomic Status (SES) Differences

• People with lower SES tend to be more helpful.
• Priming higher-SES people with stimuli that trigger compassion and activate an agentic self-concept can increase their helpfulness.

Cultural Differences

• People are more likely to help ingroup members and less likely to help outgroup members.
• The lines between "us" and "them" may be more clearly defined in collectivistic cultures.
• Those in individualistic cultures are more likely to seek public recognition for their good acts.

Religion

• Religion is associated with self-reported donations and volunteering, especially to others of the same faith.
• Priming religion (explicitly or implicitly) can enhance prosocial behavior.

Mood

• “Feel good, do good”
• People are more likely to help when in a good mood.
• 84% people helped after they found a dime vs. 4% who did not
• Helping prolongs a good mood and increases self-awareness.
• People are more likely to help if they are feeling guilty, sad, or distressed.
• Negative-state relief hypothesis posits that people help to alleviate their own sadness and distress
• Not all negative emotions increase helping behavior.
• "Feel nothing, don't bother"
• Emotional numbness can be a temporary response to social exclusion to avoid the pain of rejection
• People are less likely to help when in a state of emotional numbness
• Emotional numbness interferes with empathy.

Situational Determinants of Prosocial Behavior

• Helping behavior is influenced by rural vs. urban environments, residential mobility, and the presence of bystanders.

Rural Vs. Urban Living

• People in rural areas tend to help more.
• The urban overload hypothesis suggests that people living in cities are bombarded with stimulation and keep to themselves to avoid being overloaded.

Residential Mobility

• People who live in a place for a long time are more likely to help community members than those who recently arrived.
• Membership in a community increases prosocial behavior through greater attachment and interdependence.
• Interdependence and a sense of community can be fostered quickly.

Bystander Effect

• The greater the number of bystanders who witness an emergency, the less likely any one of them will help.

Latané & Darley's (1970) Five Steps

• People go through five decision-making steps before they help someone in an emergency.
• Failure to take any of the steps will result in no help being given.
• The steps are noticing the event, interpreting the event as an emergency, assuming responsibility, knowing an appropriate form of assistance, and deciding to implement help.
• Noticing the event: Distraction or being in a hurry can cause failure to notice.
• Interpreting the event as an emergency: Pluralistic ignorance and lack of informational social influence can cause failures.
• Assuming responsibility: Diffusion of responsibility can cause failures.
• Knowing an appropriate form of assistance: Lack of knowledge or competence can cause failures.
• Deciding to implement help: High perceived costs can cause failures.

Rewards and Role Models

• People can encourage prosocial behavior among kids by rewarding prosocial acts with praise, smiles, and hugs.
• Heavy rewards may lower intrinsic interest in engaging in prosocial behavior (overjustification effect).
• Modeling prosocial behaviors can help to encourage children.

Education & Specificity

• Teaching people about the bystander effect and the determinants of prosocial behavior can make them more aware of why they sometimes don't help.
• Education can lead to increased helping.
• Being specific and direct when seeking help can induce helping behavior.
• Direct requests remove uncertainty regarding the situation, what assistance is needed, and who should provide it.

Shared Identity

• Creating or drawing attention to a shared identity can increase helping behavior in a group.
• This approach may be particularly effective when strangers or enemies are involved.

Cognitive / Affective Approaches

• Fostering empathy or guilt through perspective-taking and reason can increase helping.
• Highlighting rewards and lower perceived costs (social exchange theory) can also increase helping.